Doubts is something that we can all deeply relate to. I would like to share a story with you that happened just recently. I was talking to my coach and I was telling him how I was feeling uncertain about my abilities and skills to run my business and make it as successful as I see some of my role models have. He took a pause and then he looked at me and said let me tell you a story about my son.

He said my son plays in the elementary school football team, the other day I was driving him home and he said, “Dad I don’t think I am as good as the other guys?”

so he asked his son what do mean? His son said “I am not as fast or strong as the other kids, I am not good like them.

So Ryan asked his boy “well how many practices have you been to so far? The kid says not too may
How many games have you played this year? The kid says the season just started dad so not many.

He told me that he looked dead in his son’s eyes and said, “son, then how do you expect to be as good as them?

He pointed out to his son that some of those boys have been playing for more than a few seasons. You have to earn the right to be good by putting in the time to practice your game.”

if you feel like you don’t have the right skill to compete in the same arena as the people you look up to then you’re right but what you need to remember that with time and the constant rigor of beating on your craft will make you better everyday, better than you are today so that one day you can earn the right to sit with the people that you look up to.

Here are the lessons I learned from that conversation:

Number 1: Have a coach or a mentor that will tell you things like these when you need to hear them. You can’t get to this clarity of understanding if you don’t have someone that has done it before you to tell you what to expect.

Number 2: Listen and remind the inner child. We all have a child within us that doubts what we can achieve and feels less before even trying to be more. When the inner child speaks you have to hear it but then the most important thing is to remind he or she that being good at something comes only by being ok with bad and still keep going.

Number 3: Train yourself. Train your mind and your body. Train everything you can and this will naturally work to reduce your doubts.

When you’re first learning a new skill, you have to go through a series of steps to ensure you go through the process correctly. When learning a new skill it is absolutely natural to have doubts but as you train yourself those doubts have no choice but to go away. Think about driving, when you first started, you probably had major doubts about driving the car down the street safely. but after years of training you perform those same tasks efficiently and effectively without any doubts.

A technique that you can is the OODA loop a decision making process loop first developed by the US Air Force. Which refers to the cycle of Observe, Orient, Decide and Act that you can employ when it comes to making decisions. You can use this technique to make better decisions and overtime reduce the doubt that can come up when you’re deciding to take the next step.

Whether you use this technique or another one, the more you train your mind to make process driven decisions in real-world environments, the better capable you’ll be of getting to the desired outcome quicker while at the same time reducing your doubts.

Doubts usually come up when we get stuck in analysis paralysis as you train yourself more and more the less time you’ll spend critically analyzing every situation which means you’ll be able to respond quicker without letting your doubt stop you.

And finally Number 4. if you fail doing something then even failure taste sweeter when it results from the attempt of trying. When you fail trying something it might be obvious to think that doubts become even more prevalent but that’s not the case, atleast in my experience that has not been the case. As I have failed I have been forced to reevaluate my decision making process, helping me to create a more robust system, which in turn has only worked to reduce my doubts in my ability to take the next steps and accomplish my objectives.

And remember doubt or no doubt, When you’ve stepped in the arena and lose you can come out with your head held high than if you never went in it in the first place.

Categories

About Us

I am, Ahmed Aibak, former engineer turned online and offline entrepreneur. After getting a Master in Engineering I worked the corporate ladder for a few years; working long hours, without passion or a sense of purpose I found myself marching to the beat of someone else’s drum.